Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

Apparat's Krieg und Frieden (Music For Theater) is quite pleasant. Very well composed with lots of layers and long builds. Plenty of beautiful, suspenseful, and exciting tracks. Overall, the tracks reuse the same formula so a few lose their uniqueness which is my only complaint, but as a whole, the album has enough going on to draw you in. The vocal tracks are kind of cheesy (more fit for some CW show then theater) but I have to say they worked with the album.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

Yes. I was hoping to hear this. After the bore that was Compass it is good to hear.

Originally Posted by bmack86

And it's been long established that Chris hates fun.

Originally Posted by Hatinisbad

I took my niece this year and it was her first Coachella. It was so fun to see it through her eyes. She thought it felt like a magical scene from Shreck. The one where all the fairy tale creatures meet for the first time in Shreck's swamp.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

While doing festival research, I've given a few listens to Darkstar's new release, News from Nowhere. It doesn't even sound like the same group they were (didn't they do dubsteppy type stuff once upon a time?). I'm quite taken with "-" (which I can't find a video for), and have already found myself listening to it on repeat, especially the first half of the album. I'm reading of a lot of comparisons to Animal Collective, which I don't quite see (namely I can't stand Animal Collective, so there's that). It doesn't sound like new/unique to me by any means, but it's pretty lovely.

These are not even my favorite tracks from the album, but I'm having trouble finding much on YT right now.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

Just checked out Flume - s/t and came away entertained. The album is a grab bag assortment of more poppy electronic styles but more then a few were done well. Won't be an album that will make any mid year lists but the kid has talent and is worth checking out.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

Doldrums' Lesser Evil is fucking nuts! It's like if Fuck Buttons and The Knife had a baby! Crazy, thumping, layers of rhythmic percussion, with female vocals, and everything mish mashed and turned upside down. Noisy, yet super listenable and dancey, and never boring. This is a great album.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

The new Atlas Genius has poised them to blow up this year. Although not my cup o tea, their radio-friendly jams are perfectly suited to alt radio (KROG, Live 105) and the hooks on this one remind me a lot of when I first heard Phoenix's last release...and we all know what has happened with them.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

When It Was Now by Atlas Genius is an explosion of some heavy synth pop first heard in the opening track Electric. Following that there's a very heavy bass driven jam known as If So where the lead vocalist Keith sounds pretty similar to Caleb of Kings of Lion. There's the very catchy and laid back single Trojans which has some nice acoustics. The track Symptoms is my favorite because the opening guitar strokes are chilling. There's a nice flow throughout their album. Not every song is great, but as previously said they have the sound to be playing some big shows in the future.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

Not Afraid Anymore by Oak is an excellent post rock record. I'm having a hard time at this point really describing every single one of these post rock albums, but if you like pretty thunderous instrumental metal with post rock noodley guitars you will like this too. There are some really great builds and climaxes on this one.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

As you might be able to tell, i am trying to catch up on lost time as i was extremely busy working on huge projects for a while and wasn't able to to spend a lot of time listening to new records.

I'm listening to Saċad's Orbs & Channels right - it's a wonderfully haunting and super dark and eerie drone album. These songs really are layered soundscapes - nothing to melodic really to speak of, but it's extremely well done and paints a vivid sonic picture. The album is very well-sequenced too, each song blending into the next to create one large, cohesive piece.

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I have so far listened to 1.2 hours of Autechre's Exai and must echo the excitement for it that has already been expressed. This album is stupendous! It is extremely inventive and adventurous for the duo, yet at the same time might be the most accessible of their albums i've listened to. I love different every song is, repetitiveness sometimes being an issue for an album like this, yet there is still a cohesive sound to the whole thing. Really, really good stuff.

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Mixed at the best. Their releases have been brickwalled for a while, and the compression on the tracks is noticeable. A few spots of clipping. I couldn't help but listen once but a full devoted play through was enough to know that this should be shelved until a full resolution copy is available. You can just tell thats there's a lot of music missing from these files. Very heavily layered music from The Flaming Lips. Dark dark layers.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

I haven't yet listened to Atoms for Peace or the Flaming Lips or Youth Lagoon or a few other hyped releases. Nick Cave's new one is good, but didn't do nearly as much for me as it has for y'all. The Men's new one, New Moon, on the other hand. Fuck yes. It's odd that only about two years ago they were blasting out hardcore punk songs with the level of melodic development and clean playing they express here. Open Your Heart definitely sounds more like a bridge album now that this one is out there: it's not until the 7th song that you hit anything that would have fit on the last releases. Rather than just switching up their old sound though, it sounds like they've really grown into their more classic rock shoes here, as the songs are solid as hell and the performances are great. So happy to hear something this good this early in the year.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

After my first listen last night the new one by The Men is really solid, although I must admit that this stronger focus on country-tinged rock is going to take me a bit to get used to. I really prefer The Men in full attack mode so it's no surprise that I so far prefer the songs near the end of the album, but I have a feeling this one will be a grower.

As for Youth Lagoon, wow, what a step up from an already strong debut. Similarly to the way that the new Autre Ne Veut made good use of an increased production budget on Anxiety, Wondrous Bughouse really allowed YL to flesh out and expand their sound for the better. These songs also don't feel as insular as those on The Year of Hibernation (maybe because this album was recorded as a band rather than as a bedroom project?) but IMO the extended song lengths and quicker tempos really work.

Originally Posted by roberto73

I'd contribute to this discussion but I'm still busy reminiscing about the halcyon days of punk. You know, the mid-90s.

Re: Tell Us About 2013 Releases

I'm only half way through Exai, but I'm not really understanding all of the praise for this album. It's listenable, but this doesn't really seem innovative at all to me, particularly in light of their discography and the impact some of their releases had on me at the time they came out. I'd still be up for seeing them when they tour the album, hoping it would come alive more live, but I'm not very impressed so far. Struggling to make myself listen to the second half when I have so much other stuff to catch up on.

Listened to Autre Ne Veut's Anxiety couple of times this weekend and really enjoyed it. First half of the record was really really strong, I thought, I wanted to go back and listen to a couple of songs on repeat. Second half of the album was a little same-ish to me but still pretty solid. Need to listen to this a few more times on a good system (was listening on ipod).

Think I'm gonna check out the new Surgeon and Prurient releases today while they're streaming online.